[FPSPACE] Re: Where are Russia's Industrial "Space Spin-Offs"??

[William E. Haynes]

Jim et al:
    In a nation that can not keep its basic utilities operating, who has the
energy or resources to exploit new technology?
    If Russia ever gets its legal infrastructure working:
*They may be able to protect intellectual property rights, making both foreign
and domestic investments much more attractive
*They will be able to enact and enforce tax laws, finally offering a measure of
fiscal responsibility and predictability and fairer business environment
*They may even be able to control both the Oligarchs and the Mafia
*They may actually enjoy a transient advantage, when their legal system enjoys
stability but is not yet hammered by the tort pirates as ours is.
    Then, as they begin to build domestic wealth, they will have the kind of
environment that we have enjoyed, to exploit their native intellignce and human
talent.
    They, as did Western Europe after WW II, will be able to leapfrog old
tchnology and go directly to hybrid automobiles, wireless comm and internet,
virtual schools, colleges and universities, distributed energy generation (fuel
cells, photovoltaic, wind turbines, hydrogen, and geothermal) and stuff we have
to implement the hard way by a much slower and more costly transition out of the
old and into the new, rolling over all the vested interests that will resist
those changes.
Bill Haynes

JamesOberg@aol.com wrote:

> Where are Russia's Industrial "Space Spin-Offs"??
>
> I'm cataloguing any "success stories" in Russian/Soviet application of
> space-developed technology to commercial and industrial processes in their
> non-space sectors of industry. Unlike in Europe, Japan, Canada, and the U.S.,
> there don't appear to be many -- if any -- good examples. Am I missing
> something? Are there any products being successfully sold which depend on
> materials made in space, or in processes discovered in space? I know there
> are economic and managerial reasons why such advances couldn't be implemented
> in decades past, but is there any prospect for change now?
>
> Jim Oberg
>
> ====
> In July 1999, the United Nations sponsored a conference called "Unispace III"
> to discuss the value of space activities for human civilization. Aleksandr
> Yakovenko, a Russian member of his country’s permanent mission to the Outer
> Space Affairs Committee in Vienna, presented Russia’s official assessment of
> its use of space for its national needs.
>
> The report gave tribute to traditional civil applications of space
> technology, such as communications satellites, weather observations,
> navigation, and ecological monitoring.
>
> Yakovenko then addressed the fundamental issue which motivates nations to
> engage in space research, the improvement in the technological base of its
> industrial infrastructure through space research and even space-based
> manufacturing.
>
> "Transfer and active application of the latest scientific and technical
> achievements [to] the Russian economy is a very important aspect of space
> activity," he wrote. "At present, experience is being gained and work carried
> out to create a system assuring an intensive development of the potential of
> scientific and technological achievements in the field of space-rocket
> equipment into various sectors of the economy. The necessary legal
> preconditions for the efficient development of such a system are taking
> shape."
>
> Jim comments: this paragraph is meaningless blather. It only shows they don't
> have a clue on how to do what they say they want to do.